São Paulo – The United Arab Emirates will host two urban-related events in February. The 10th World Urban Forum (WUF10) will take place in Abu Dhabi from February 8-13 at the same time that the UAE capital hosts Better Cities Film Festival. Both events are organized by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat).
The forum is held every two years and attended by ministers, mayors, scholars, community activists, artists, and journalists. Admission is free but participants must register on the forum’s website until February 4. The event will also be streamed online on the UN Web TV.
This year theme is ‘Cities of Opportunities: Connecting Culture And Innovation.’ The conference features roundtables; assemblies for youth, women, and local and regional governments; and around 400 other events organized by partners. The program includes Urban Expo – a trade show with over 170 exhibitors from around 66 countries addressing the Sustainable Development Goals.
So far, around 50 mayors and governors have confirmed their presence in the forum, coming from cities in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North and South America. The UN has also confirmed the presence of high-level representations of 15 of its agencies, as well as ministers of state. The last edition of the forum occurred in 2018 in Malaysia (pictured above).
Film Festival
Part of the WUF program, the Better Cities Film Festival aims to screen documentary and fiction films on urban issues. The event was originally founded in 2013 as the New Urbanism Film Festival but is being restructured and relaunched this year in partnership with First+Main Films.
The festival will award the best movie, which will be screened in events around the world. “It is particularly timely to launch this Festival as the theme this year is all about culture and innovation,” UN-Habitat executive director Maimunah Mohd Sharif was quoted saying.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
